FRONTIERS OF ZOOLOGYDale A. Drinnon has been a researcher in the field of Cryptozoology for the past 30+ years and has corresponded with Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson. He has a degree in Anthropology from Indiana University and is a freelance artist and writer. Motto: "I would rather be right and entirely alone than wrong in the company with all the rest of the world"--Ambroise Pare', "the father of modern surgery", in his refutation of fake unicorn horns.

Sunday, 30 December 2012

Editor’s Note: This is a post by Bigfoot Evidence contributor, Damian Bravo. You can join his Facebook group, Sasquatch Lives?.

Those which follow the Bigfoot enigma have to learn right away to be disappointed. In this search to find the true evidence on Bigfoot, the first rule you must learn is great claims require even greater undeniable proof. We have seen in 2012 several claims of a captured Bigfoot, whether dead or alive as the supposed team Quantra who Ed Smith, an avid and trusted poster in the MABRC forums, mistakenly received a coded message; “We have Daisy in a box” and released....

Yet, my good friend and respect member of the Bigfoot community Guy Edwards in
one of the Podcast of Extinct created by www.thebigfootreport.com creator, Ro
Sahebi, made a very true resounding message about “BIG” Bigfoot announcements
and the 5 stages which could be applied to them...

One of my facebook friends posted this image of what looks very much like a bear engraved into a rock face in the middle of the Sahara and estimated to be 6000 years old:

This was labelled with a name approximately meaning "Boogieman" but to me it looks like an extremely good portrait of a Eurasian brown bear with a small hump on the shoulders, pom-pom ears, dished face, "Piglike" snout and even a sort of a grin on his face. He seems to be carrying off a goat or ram slung over his shoulder. From Roman-age records we also know that the Ethiopian bear known to be flourishing then was of much the same appearance and nature. When the Arabs began setting up trading posts in East Africa (at about the same time as the Viking Age in the North Atlantic), they made mentions of what they called a Duba according to Heuvelmans, the usual word meaning "Bear", and apparently all along the Zanj or Eastern coast of Africa down to Zanzibar.

It would seem to me that people who had been saying "there are no bears in Africa to account for the Nandi Bear (Chemosit or 'Boogeyman' )" have just been wrong all along to say that. The simplest hypothesis is that the Nandi bear really is a bear, and a not especially unusual bear, either.

Sightings increase of Zimbabwe’s own ‘Loch Ness monster’

By JANE FIELDS IN ZIMBABWE Published on Thursday 27 December 2012 10:47

A MYTHICAL serpent-like creature who lives in the murky depths of a lake and is the subject of countless childrens’ stories. Sound familiar? Meet Nyaminyami, Zimbabwe’s very own Loch Ness monster.

He has the head of a fish and a snake’s body. He lives in Lake Kariba, a magnificent man-made dam in the northwest of the country, studded with hippos and the eerie skeletal tops of long-dead trees. And for the first time in more than a decade, Zimbabweans living on the shores of Kariba are reporting a mysterious sighting on the River God.

State media is reporting that fishermen and residents of Mahombekombe, a suburb of Kariba town, saw Nyaminyami earlier this month.

“We were anchoring our boat near the District Development Fund harbour when we saw a large group of people rushing to the harbour. We quickly roped in our boat and rushed to where the group had gathered.

“I saw, with my own eyes, a monster snake that was almost two hundred metres long,” said fisherman Tapera Siyungungura. “Ask anyone who lives around this area and you will get confirmations of the story.”

“The truth of the matter is that Nyaminyami revealed itself to the people recently,” a second fisherman, Masenzi Dube Zimbabwe newspaper the Sunday Mail.

After the claims, the Mail sent a news crew on the long five-hour drive to Kariba to investigate the claims. The paper reported the beast took 45 minutes to ‘snake’ across the harbour in broad daylight – giving ample time to villagers to watch him and marvel. Eyewitnesses claimed Nyaminyami was so big that a truck would not have killed him if it had run him over.

Bite

Nyaminyami’s name is a corruption of a phrase in the local Tonga language that means “pieces of meat”. It’s a reference to Nyaminyami’s selfless character: apparently during times of drought Nyaminyami would let villagers cut pieces of his body to eat. And though you could take a bite out of him, no matter how many bites you took you’d never finish eating the creature up, say locals.

Nyaminyami was separated from his ‘wife’ during the construction of the Kariba dam wall by the colonial authorities during the 1950s, so the story goes. There is a belief that the beast is forever trying to get over the wall to be reunited with her – and those frenzied attempts are what cause the frequent earth tremors in the area.

But not everyone is buying the story that Nyaminyami caused a few houses to fall down in Kariba when he made his surprise appearance this month.

“I can confirm that [he] did not destroy any buildings...It is true that Nyaminyami was sighted here but some residents are just spicing up the story,” fisherman Lovemore Sibanda told the Sunday Mail.

The paper reported on Nyaminyami’s “reappearance” as if it were entirely credible. Some Zimbabweans believe in goblins and mermaids -- and the press regularly reports on their appearances too. Earlier this year Water Minister Samuel Sipepa Nkomo claimed that mermaids in two dams in eastern Zimbabwe were preventing the installation of water pumps there. Special rites had to be conducted to appease the mermaids.

Some have tried to offer evidence for Nyaminyami’s existence. One theory is that he may be a giant African catfish. Others are more sceptical.

“This is just a python,” says one local journalist, who has reported on the story for more than 15 years.

On one occasion the matter came up before (And I do not see where the comment is listed now at the CFZ) I mentioned that it is common enough for Congo Dragons to be described in terms of "Partly this and partly that" and that the NAME of this Nyaminyami is related to names of the more usual giant monitor lizard monsters of more Central Africa (ie, Congo Dragons) The interpretation "Pieces of meat" is a variation to go along with a local legend, a process common enough in Folklore. the SIGHTINGS I would assume are largely standing waves of some sort. I am reprinting this now because it strikes me that the open snake's mouth with fangs is EXACTLY what was represented about the "Dingonek" earlier, another "Partly this and partly that" description- DD.

Wednesday, 26 December 2012

Ok, so it has been concluded that the species of origin that is the major contributor of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA in Justin Smeja's sample is a female black bear, Ursus americanus. The sample also yielded human mitochondrial DNA-- Justin Smeja's DNA. Even though the tissue sample was recovered 5 weeks after the shooting of the two Bigfoots, it was likely that the flesh could have belonged to other animals in the area, including bear or coyote. Many people, including myself hoped that the tissue would turn out to be an unknown primate of some sort. When Smeja returned to the scene to recover the body, the place was under a 3-4 feet of snow, and unfortunately, the tissue was all he was able recover. It was discovered on a slope near a tree stump a few yards from where he hid the juvenile's body.

From this it seems definite that the same sample analysed had two sets of mitochondrial DNA, one human of presumably European ancestry and the other female black bear, with the bear DNA predominant and the sex of the human DNA donor not determined, but most likely from more than one human donor because parts of the sequences do not match up between tested samples.

I would definitely go for contamination in this case. And as one commentator has noted, there is no way to know for certain that this steak came from whatever it was Justin had shot at, it was found later when Smeja and others went back to look for remains after he had left the bodies in the first place. But one thing is certain, the sample does NOT represent a crossbreeding of a human and a bear!

Monday, 24 December 2012

Forensic Expert Says Bigfoot Is Real

(National Geographic)

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News

October 23, 2003

It's been the subject of campfire stories for decades. A camera-elusive, grooming-challenged, bipedal ape-man that roams the mountain regions of North America. Some call it Sasquatch. Others know it as Bigfoot.Thousands of people claim to have seen the hairy hominoid, but the evidence of its existence is fuzzy. There are few clear photographs of the oversized beast. No bones have ever been found. Countless pranksters have admitted to faking footprints.
Yet a small but vociferous number of scientists remain undeterred. Risking ridicule from other academics, they propose that there's enough forensic evidence to warrant something that has never been done: a comprehensive, scientific study to determine if the legendary primate actually exists.
"Given the scientific evidence that I have examined, I'm convinced there's a creature out there that is yet to be identified," said Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University in Pocatello.

Thousands of Sightings
Sasquatch stories go back centuries. Tales of mythical giant apes lurk in the oral traditions of most Native American tribes, as well as in Europe and Asia. The Himalaya has its Abominable Snowman, or the Yeti. In Australia, Bigfoot is known as the Yowie Man.Bigfoot advocates hypothesize that the primate is the offspring of an ape from Asia that wandered to North America during the Ice Age. They believe there are at least 2,000 ape men walking upright in North America's woods today.An adult male is said to be at least 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall, weigh 800 pounds (360 kilograms), and have feet twice the size of a human's. The creatures are described as shy and nocturnal, and their diets consist mostly of berries and fruits.Matt Moneymaker had been searching for Bigfoot for years. In the woods of eastern Ohio, he claims he finally came eye to eye with the elusive primate."It was 2 o'clock in the morning and the moon was a quarter full," recalled Moneymaker. "Suddenly, there he was, an eight-foot-tall creature, standing 15 feet away, growling at me. He wanted to let me know I was in the wrong place."Moneymaker, who lives in Dana Point in southern California, is a lawyer who runs his own marketing agency. In his spare time, he leads the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, a network of more than 3,000 people who claim to have seen the Sasquatch.Unfortunately, no one has been able to snap a clear picture of the beast.
Perhaps the most compelling photographic evidence of Bigfoot is a controversial short film shot by Roger Patterson in 1967, which appears to document a female Bigfoot striding along a riverbank in northern California.

"It certainly wasn't human"
Now, Bigfoot advocates are increasingly turning to forensic evidence to prove the existence of the giant creature.
Investigator Jimmy Chilcutt of the Conroe Police Department in Texas, who specializes in finger- and footprints, has analyzed the more than 150 casts of Bigfoot prints that Meldrum, the Idaho State professor, keeps in a laboratory.Chilcutt says one footprint found in 1987 in Walla Walla in Washington State has convinced him that Bigfoot is real."The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I've ever seen," he said. "It certainly wasn't human, and of no known primate that I've examined. The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this animal has a real thick skin."Meldrum, meanwhile, says a 400-pound (180-kilogram) block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast provides further evidence of Bigfoot's existence. The cast was made in September 2000 from an impression of a large animal that had apparently lain down on its side to retrieve some fruit next to a mud hole in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State. Meldrum says the cast contains recognizable impressions of a forearm, a thigh, buttocks, an Achilles tendon and heel. "It's 40 to 50 percent bigger than a normal human," he said. "The anatomy doesn't jive with any known animal."A few academics believe Meldrum could be right.Renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall last year surprised an interviewer from National Public Radio when she said she was sure that large, undiscovered primates, such as the Yeti or Sasquatch, exist.

The Skeptics
But the vast majority of scientists still believe Bigfoot is little more than supermarket tabloid fodder. They wonder why no Bigfoot has ever been captured, dead or alive."The bottom line is, they don't have a body," said Michael Dennett, who writes for Skeptical Inquirer magazine and who has followed the Bigfoot debate for 20 years. Bigfoot buffs note that it's rare to find a carcass of a grizzly bear in the wild. While that's true, grizzlies have not escaped photographic documentation. Hair samples that have been recovered from alleged Bigfoot encounters have turned out to come from elk, bears or cows. Many of the sightings and footprints, meanwhile, have proved to be hoaxes. After Bigfoot tracker Ray Wallace died in a California nursing home last year, his children finally announced that their prank-loving dad had created the modern myth of Bigfoot when he used a pair of carved wooden feet to create a track of giant footprints in a northern California logging camp in 1958.Dennett says he's not surprised by the flood of Bigfoot sightings. "It's the same kind of eyewitness reports we see for the Loch Ness Sea Monster, UFOs, ghosts, you name it," he said. "The monster thing is a universal product of the human mind. We hear such stories from around the world."

Spider version of Bigfoot emerges from caves in the Pacific Northwest

Related images(click to enlarge)

Griswold CE, Audisio T, Ledford JM

Griswold CE, Audisio T, Ledford JM

Griswold CE, Audisio T, Ledford JM

The forests of the coastal regions from California to British Columbia are renowned for their unique and ancient animals and plants, such as coast redwoods, tailed frogs, mountain beavers and the legendary Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch). Whereas Bigfoot is probably just fiction, a huge, newly discovered spider is very real. Trogloraptor (or "cave robber") is named for its cave home and spectacular, elongate claws. It is a spider so evolutionarily special that it represents not only a new genus and species, but also a new family (Trogloraptoridae). Even for the species-rich insects and arachnids, to discover a new, previously unknown family is an historic moment. A team of citizen scientists from the Western Cave Conservancy and arachnologists from the California Academy of Sciences found these spiders living in caves in southwest Oregon. Colleagues from San Diego State University found more in old-growth redwood forests. Charles Griswold, Curator of Arachnology, Joel Ledford, postdoctoral researcher, and Tracy Audisio, graduate student, all at the California Academy of Sciences, collected, analyzed, and described the new family. Audisio's participation was supported by the Harriet Exline Frizzell Memorial Fund and by the Summer Systematics Institute at the Academy, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.Trogloraptor hangs beneath rudimentary webs on cave ceilings. It is about four centimeters wide when its legs are extended -- larger than the size of a half-dollar coin. Their extraordinary, raptorial claws suggest that they are fierce, specialized predators, but their prey and attack behavior remain unknown.
The anatomy of Trogloraptor forces arachnologists to revise their understanding of spider evolution. Strong evidence suggests that Trogloraptor is a close relative of goblin spiders, but Trogloraptor possesses a mosaic of ancient, widespread features and evolutionary novelties.
The true distribution of Trogloraptor remains unknown: that such a relatively large, peculiar animal could elude discovery until 2012 suggests that more may be lurking in the forests and caves of western North America.http://esciencenews.com/articles/2012/08/17/spider.version.bigfoot.emerges.caves.pacific.northwest

Thursday, 20 December 2012

Some while back I made the observation that Roy Mackal's longnecked amphibian model for The Loch Ness Monster (the theory is merely a revival of one suggested by Rupert T Gould in the 1930s) has essentially the same outline as Maurice Burton's giant otter as presented in The Elusive Monster based on a Giant South American otter blown up to the same supposed size of 20 feet long (The otter has a broadened tail but it shows better when seen from above: see the photo provided below for comparison.) Because of this I suggested that the basic reason for Burton's giant otter and for these divergent reports with shorter, thicker necks and larger heads (at least twice the length and breadth in proportion as compared to the longer-necked creature reports) that Mackal insists on, are due to sightings of Master-Otters in the Loch, with the apparent size often doubled in the eyes of the witnesses. Strongly documented clear views of shorter-necked creatures, with webbed feet but individual clawed toes, are recorded from both Loch Ness and Loch Morar, and are also known historically. The reconstructions of the monster that tend to have head and neck 4-5 feet long, body 8-10 feet long and tail 8-10 feet long (which is roughly the proportions given by Gould, Mackal and Burton at the 20-25 foot long range)similar to the giant otter. However, going by the reports that include the longest necks and NOT averaging them in with the shorter-necked, bigger-headed reports, the proportions are reversed, with the head and neck 8-10 feet, body 8-10 feet and the tail 4-5 feet of the total length. Dinsdale's model comes out to this when the proportions are remeasured and it is much more like the proportions of a Plesiosaur. Morar the reports seem to indicate many things, but the "Monster" reports show statistically outstanding and statistically distinct categories of giant otters (Master otters) and Plesiosaur-shaped animals, neither type common and neither type in permanent residence in the Loch. Over much of the rest of the British Isles, Master Otters are more often seen. There are also other, rarer categories such as the giant eels, salamanders and the traditional water horses (Elk). I the case of the Elk they are sources for the Folklore, but modern reports are almost all of them bunched together in the early part of the 20th century (and then again possibly earlier ones in the 1800s "Remembered" later.the Northern Hemisphere goes, swimming Elk (Moose) are clearly more dominant in Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, Alaska and Canada: in Scandinavia and parts of Canada reports spill out to sea. LongNecks appear in those same sea areas-as well as globally!-but their necks are much longer and they can displaty the "Upturned Boat" bulky body configuration at the same time. And Such photographic evidence as Scott Mardis has pointed out is clearly and unmistakenly Plesiosaurian. I actually doubt if Master-otters grow longer than 10-12 feet ordinarily, the size of a big cat used as a reference in other parts of the world. Reports of regular South American giant otters do run up to 20 feet also, so there is some precident for that)

The Giant Sardinian Otter, Megalenhydris barbaricina, of the Late Pleistocene of Sardinia. It was the largest otter known, at least six feet in length. Preyed primarily on fish, contrary to ~HodariNundu's interpretation [The length of six feet given here, as well as the slightly lesser figure given to the giant river otter of South America is the usual meaure of Snout-to-vent length, leaving the tail off]

Top skeleton drawing is Cryptoclidus_by_banchero from Deviant Art, using the common human (6 foot man) marker for scale. The reconstruction below is by deinonychusempire-on Deviant art and the combination was posted on an earlier blog. Cryptoclidus had a body size (bulk) equivalent to that of an elephant, or just about an elephant seal plus tail and long neck, which is in turn just about right to match sonar traces and most witness' size estimates for the Loch Ness Monster. One, two, or three basic humps on the back are possible by different reconstructions but I prefer the idea it is variable-contour following the LongNecked Sea Serpent reconstruction of Heuvelmans (See below). The average estimated total length is about thirty feet freshwater and sixty feet in the oceans, which is in itself cause to consider that the estimates made at sea are less accurate.(Ibid)

The fact that Scott Mardis' comparisons (and my own) consistently come out as close to Cryptoclidus
is likely to be singularly significant.

I have found Dinsdale's composite to be the most accurate reconstruction and applicable in most parallel cases such as in Lake Champlain and in Patagonia and Australia. A few of Heuvelmans' reconstructed Sea Serpent models from the next book are close to Dinsdales' but most likely falsely split off from it to form new and wrongly differentiated species of Sea Serpents:http://www.amazon.com/Wake-Sea-Serpents-Bernard-Heuvelmans/dp/0809058146

Cryptoclidus_erect_necked_April-2010_Tetrapod Zoology. Notice the shape of the head as measured against the actual skull is not quite right in the reconstruction.http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/04/17/esc-sea-monster-poster/
Needless to say, I dispute Darren's statements on the matter of prehistoric survivals and the availability of Coelacanths to provide a parallel example, but I also want no part of "Cadborosaurus willsi" as it has been defined, or any of the rest of the statements about Sea Monsters, which I consider to be misrepresentations of the database as well as being incorrect notions besides.

For my part, I'd have to agree that everyone is far too relaxed in video, including the dog, and that is suspicious. The figure that runs by and pretends to be an ape (NOT "Pretends to be a Bigfoot") seems to be a person in ordinary clothing before they dash across the opening.

Monday, 17 December 2012

Scott Mardis just sent me some more Plesiosaur comparisons to Loch Ness Moster photos on Facebook. While I had considered the first one before, Really credit for the second goes to him and I'll split credit on the first because Scott had no way of knowing I had spoken to the witness and discussed the matter earlier (via email, unpublished correspondance)

Comparisons and captions are Scott's. I should note that the museum mount is missing its teeth. I remarked that the underwater head had something of the look of a sock puppet before (but that I had heard of Sea Serpent cases where it was supposed to look like that) Scott remarked that Doc Shiel's Loch Ness Monster phoro also looked like a sock puppet: maybe front-on and in life, Plesiosaurs looked something like a muppet in the face.The museum mount skull has that same look.

One of the clearest photos of the Loch Ness monster was taken by Anthony 'Doc'
Shiels in May of 1977. The picture is so clear, however, it immediately makes
experts skeptical and has been referred to in some circles as "the Loch Ness
Muppet." Shiels himself, a self-styled physic, has said that while he definitely
takes photos of lake monsters, he doesn't believe in them. The UnMuseum http://www.unmuseum.org/lochness.htm

Uploader comment: The Doc Shiels picture reversed and stretched horizontally, this is the same image and not a second of a series.

Image status: UNEXPLAINED This famous photograph taken by Anthony 'Doc' Shiels in 1977 was allegedly taken near Urquhart Castle. While never proven as a hoax the clarity of the picture calls its authenticity in to doubt.

With more elongated views a Postorbital skull opening (on top in the rear of the head)

can be seen directly behind the eye socket (o) and this arrangement is typical of Plesiosaurs

Doc Shiel's reconstruction of creature in the photo: he thought it was an invertebrate

Unfortunately because Doc Shiels suggested the invertebrate theory once again, we must take this opportunity to squash it all over again.Most recent proponent of this theory is Oberon Zell, whose theory can be found at an internet review site:

Model of the Loch Ness Monster ashore based on the drawing of the creature ashore, as drawn by witness [ Sketch by Margaret Munroe of the animal she saw on
BorhamBeach, Loch Ness, on 6/3/34. (Witchell, p.100f)] . The sculpture was done by Oberon Zell, author of the theory.

Morgawr, Cornwall, and Lough Muck Monster, Ireland

Both of them supposedly photos mailed in to Doc Shiels by unknown photographers

who wished to remain anonymous

Academy of Applied Sciences "Gargoyle Head" and "Flipper" photos,
taken at Loch Ness in the mid-1970s

The theory of Oberon Zell is based on a completely imaginary invented animal. nothing remotely like it exists in nature now nor yet in the fossil record. And the key flaw is, as Bernard Heuvelmans pointed out when the theory started circulating in the 1960s, is that such an enormous body mass requires an internal skeleton, and the internal skeleton is what gives these creatures their distinctive head and flipper shapes (photographs top and bottom on this blog) This is also why Roy Mackal abandoned the GGiant sea slug theory in his book Loch Ness Monster. It is my contention that the internal skull and skeleton is Plesiosaurian and the creature must be regarded as Plesiosaurian: Scott is concurring with me in this. And while I don't insist on the "Gargoyle head" or "Muppet" pghotographs as closely approximating what they look like, Scott does, and he thinks these photos also tend to reinforce the theory.

Sunday, 16 December 2012

In a recent news release concerning her 5-year study on the DNA of
the Sasquatch, Dr. Melba S. Ketchum called for government at all levels to
recognize the human and Constitutional rights of these newly discovered
indigenous people.

Now
a petition has been created to gather support for that effort. Won't you please
take the time to read and sign the petition:

Thursday, 13 December 2012

DINGONEK A walrus-like creature in the heart of Africa? Such is the description of the dingonek by John Alfred Jordan, an explorer who actually shot at this unidentified monster in the River Maggori in Kenya in 1907. Jordan claimed this scale-covered creature was a big as 18 feet long and had reptilian claws, a spotted back, long tail, and a big head out of which grew large, curved, walrus-like tusks. Natives of the area further described it as having a scorpion-like tail and reported that it would kill any hippos, crocodiles, or human fisherman that dared encroach on its territory. This sounds like a fantasy creature, but consider this: At the Brackfontein Ridge in South Africa is a cave painting of an unknown creature that fits the description of the dingonek, right down to its walrus-like tusks. [top]http://paranormal.about.com/od/othercreatures/a/aa031008_2.htm

Heuvelmans on the other hand says that it might be a type of water-loving, surviving Sabertoothed catparts of central Africa:

At the same time the creature has also been suggested to be a kind of large African otter, a tt of an otter, whereas thewe know as fossils have noticeably short, bobbed-off tails. The story that it has a sting in the tail is also seen in South American "Water Tiger" storiesn told falsely of actual tigers in other places!) but the original idea seems to be borrowed from stingrays, which do indeed have a sting in the tail. Apart from that, we seem to have another instance of the "Southern Walrus" on South African shores (below). And I can vouch for the rock art wanting to show "Viper Fangs" instead of really walrus tusks, the only problem being that the artist wanted to show a wide-open, strikinging mouth, and the lower jaw is simply hard to make out lying against the animal's "Chest"

This is an outline made from the Wikipedia article to serve as clip art.

It seems the outline suggested a "Dinosaur" to an observer and it was then stated to represent the Mokele-mBembe. That is possible, but if I might suggsest, it seems to me to be a composite merging of two different African Water-Monsters, and the top parts resemble a "Serpopard":

Tuesday, 11 December 2012

Real-Life 'Hobbit' Face Revealed

Megan Gannon, News Editor

Date: 10 December 2012 Time: 09:35 AM ET

Researchers have revealed what the face of a controversial ancient human nicknamed "the Hobbit" might have looked like.
"She's not what you'd call pretty, but she is definitely distinctive," said anthropologist Susan Hayes, a senior research fellow at University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. The female doesn't have feminine-looking big eyes and she's lacking much of a forehead.

With a background in forensic science, Hayes was able to flesh out the face of the 3-foot (90 centimeter) tall, 30-year-old female based on remains that were uncovered in the Liang Bua cave on the remote Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. To come up with this facial depiction, Hayes uploaded information from 3D imaging scans of the skull into a computer graphic program and also looked at portraits by paleo-artists of the Hobbit, finding these earlier interpretations were skewed toward monkey features; her examination, meanwhile, suggested modern features were more accurate, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The 18,000-year-old skeleton, officially known as Homo floresiensis, gets its nickname from its squat stature. The Hobbit would have weighed between 66 and 77 pounds (30 and 35 kilograms). Since the discovery, scientists have debated whether the specimen actually represents an extinct species in the human family tree, perhaps a diminutive offshoot of Homo erectus, a 1.8-million-year-old hominid and the first to have body proportions comparable to those of modern Homo sapiens. [See Images of Homo Floresiensis]

The path Hayes took to reach her facial approximation.CREDIT: University of Wollongong

Critics have argued that the remains could have belonged to a human with microcephalia, a condition characterized by a small head, short stature and some mental retardation. But a 2007 study — which revealed that the Hobbit's brain was about one-third the size of a modern adult human's brain — found that its brain region ratios were inconsistent with those characteristic of microcephalia. "In our view we dispensed at that point with the microcelpahy hypothesis," said Florida State University anthropologist Dean Falk, in 2009 when a skeleton cast of H. floresiensis went on public display for the first time at Stony Brook University on Long Island. "It's not just that their brains are small; they're differently shaped. It's its own species."
Also in 2007, work by Matthew Tocheri, an anthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and colleagues found the female Hobbit's wrist bones matched, in shape and orientation, those of non-human apes; they looked much different from the wrist bones of Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and modern humans, also pointing to a new species.
The Hobbit face was unveiled at the Australian Archaeological Conference being held from Dec. 9-13 at the University of Wollongong.
Hayes, who prefers the term "facial approximation" to "facial reconstruction" for her work, said she was pleased with results.
"She's taken me a bit longer than I'd anticipated, has caused more than a few headaches along the way, but I'm pleased with both the methodological development and the final results," the researcher said in a statement.
Her work has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

While I applaud Susan Hayes' attempt, it seems to me she has missed something.

This ius the midface area of the face on the Hobbit skull, the part sometiimes refered to as the "Mask". It is used in some systems of classifiucation because it is an area that has little adaptive stress to change and remains unaltered in several lineages over long periods of time.

This is Australopithecus afarensis, an early and rather primitive Australopithecine.

The Mask area of the bridge of the nose, eye sockets and the shape of the bony structures

around them is much the same in all of the Australopithecines,

and is also much the same in the Flores Hobbit

Homo habilis, an advanced species of Australopithecus, the male is on the Left and the female is on the Right

Homo erectus, the next step us: our own genus with a much larger braincase. The face however remains very similar in this species.

The shape of the facial "Mask" area is most like Homo habilis, and most like the female of the species in this case.

Comparing the Hobbit facial Mask area with all of the others

Comparing the area with early "Archaic Homo sapiens" and the shapes are much less similar. this is mostly because the braincase is so much larger and higher that the vertical and the temple area does not force so much of a "Gabled roof" effect to the eyesockets at about where the brow ridges start.

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